pleasure to present a case developed by
my students in spurred by their social
commitment in and around the Institute
itself so I am going to present actually
on their behalf who are my students and
who have done this case and provoked me
to make the presentation here the god
makers of Kolkata Kumar to Lee revisited
the name of the case here well this is a
beginning of the day Bipasha the
fortnight of the motherhood celebration
and the Cardinals force behind the
celebration the carnival is the props
men who are clay morals for centuries
together in and around
Kolkata but worldwide kuma truly is
known for their crafty artistry the
intricacy and the delicate taste of
representations I start with a kind of
with a picture of her carcass of the
unfinished idols because that depicts
somehow the plight of the real artisans
real artists who are behind this huge
array of festivity the coolest uli uli
story goes like this
located in the north central part of
Kolkata the history of commercially
spans more than 250 years the British
East India Company allotted separate
neighborhood quarters for Indian workmen
in and around the heart of Kolkata like
Shirley para the spirit makers who loot
Ola the oil producers and kuma truly the
quarters of the clay workers
Kumar Alka Kumar a cocoon hari in Hindi
is the caste identity of the portals in
the traditional sense of an occupational
category so it’s a kind of tradition
they carry with their lineage with their
clan groupings and with their practices
in 20th century parlance they are the
magicians who transform innate natural
materials into queen-sized lives leaving
almost like another famous potter harry
potter now here is one master craftsman
who is doing the final touch over one
image and he’s so attentive to the work
that even the photographer’s flashlights
couldn’t deter him for once the story of
the settlement continues like this in
1757 the British India has decisively
wound the political authority at the
Battle of policy unfortunately the Hindu
elites of Kolkata then decided to
celebrate the victory of their colonial
going to be rulers in the form of
celebration of Durga Puja till that time
artisans of Krishna Nagar in district of
nadia around fifty miles north of
Kolkata where the sole group used to
make clay idols of various forms and
traditions including the Mahishasura be
merged any form invited by the
city-dwelling
aristocrats quite a few of them migrated
to Kolkata and were settled in Akuma
actually literally Julie means a
neighborhood of a single caste
and Klan group like say Mughal tule now
this is a serpentine violence income
actually this is particularly crowded
with date but you know the feature is
slightly lesser than the Durga because
these idols are essentially
half-finished
or unfinished so as fatigue idols but
you know the population and the amount
and volume of work involved in this is
stupendous the artist of kuma truly
ritually started their work with a
calendar of the first day of boo shock
bong Lenovo Marshall the Bengali New
Year Day however the most intense and
challenging phase of their activity
starts on the day of ratha-yatra in June
are sure in bangla when the first layer
of soft and wait art is put on the straw
and bamboo structure the brisk phase
continues from then till autumn the
month of ashwin in bangla till this
moment the detailing the saints of
geometry the beauty extracted from the
locally available recyclable and
biodegradable materials by the artisans
are simply miss Marie Singh or inspiring
now awesome creativity becomes particle
inspiring when one looks at the lack of
facility and infrastructure and the
dingy Studios running across the roads
and the lanes like a continuous series
in the locality a sea of idols in this
picture the nimble and vibrating fingers
of 80 years old geriatric artist is
trying to give
the final skin touch before the
coloration which take place when my
students went there to have some
first-hand experience that most fear was
literally repulsive in their own words
the years smells of rotten straw and
garbage rain only makes the situation
worse by clogging the poorly maintained
severs and drainage systems now artists
of Cuba truly lead a miserable life it’s
an irony that such hardship never gets
reflected in a smile of satisfaction on
the lips of the gods and goddesses
standing there it’s amazing that in
spite of such misery the art works they
produce have customers in ninety cuts
across the globe Europe North America
Africa and enter Asia Oceania and
Australia and year after year the same
patrons come back to the same lineage
same old Marshall Drupal shame Kartik
Paul to experience but new they have
produced in the major order mood and
this is the so-called studio where they
used to work and the entire studio is
also acting doubling as a warehouse so
the ground floor is filled with various
stages of making of idols then there is
a plank Creek creating a second and
third-tier wooden planks based divisions
and they’re also being used as a kind of
storehouse warehouse and kind of
finishing studios for the performance
technically speaking the art and artists
Subcommittee are natural claimants of
geographical indicator giv called
or cultural footprinting that means you
may have found many such clay model
makers across the world but the unique
method technique the raw materials the
tactics and the lineage the continuity
of the tradition is unique only to this
part of Bengal and particularly in
Calcutta the product and the process in
kuma truly are still not fortunately or
unfortunately by the intellectual
property right regime in the regional
governments of all hues since the days
of independence
till date remains somehow somewhat
indifferent to the catalytic
creationists of the autumn carnival the
total market value of which is estimated
at forty thousand crows I’ve been
starting with the Ganesha till the
surest witty festivity this entire span
there is forty thousand clothes market
and about out of which a very minuscule
almost a nano section of the total
expenditure is going to the clay
modelers but who are actually the
pivotal figures the artists who make
this festivity happen despite numerous
efforts the promised state gallery run
by the government for showcasing the
product and the process of the clay
artist in Kolkata has remained a distant
dream and as elusive as even now here’s
an octogenarian master craftsman and
he’s putting the finishing touch and
once again it shows that he carries
once again a tradition a line of
apprentice workers who are pursuing his
crops and trying to learn the skills
minutely following his strokes his
movements and hits overall physiological
configuration the work of kuma chili
artisans is an anonymous form of art
with none of the master artists from the
lineage ever getting adequate
recognition in any institutional form it
is not mostly handed down from the
father to his son and now from mother to
her daughter mala Pal is one of the most
prolific clay model maker in kuma truly
these days quite sought after also now
the women are also coming and stepping
into the field however the growing trend
among the younger generation especially
with literacy education and different
sort of aspiration is that they ask fear
to be painters with formal training
art college sort of things whereas in
the market more team-based locally at
the level of the performance taking
place their idols have been produced by
renowned artists with various other
materials include including fiberglass
the strawberries and named anything in
the world
they’re making idols out of these things
now in this context the Akuma truly
artists a sensing rate hearing the
this is a picture of an artist who is
basically would be painting the idols
and that’s also a kind of little bit of
historical initially all the pigments
all the colors used were basically
extractions of the plants and weeds
from that for the sake of economizing
and for the sake of availability they
gradually shifted to chemical colors and
now with the pollution bars and scales
implemented rigorously they are trying
to make a kind of balance within organic
and inorganic you know with each product
becoming organic and involving organic
raw materials are also becoming costlier
which is unsustainable for their economy
these are the people who imagine create
produce and supply an unique form of art
to the Kenosha and the devotees alike
the irony is the gods and goddesses to
make for the only potent market is
ruthlessly silent about the plight and
preservation of a dying art form art
since the inception of human
civilization had sheared too common
tradition one human realization of
nature in concrete or abstract forms and
to crafting imagination while
negotiating life processes there is a
third issue often always faced in a
simplistic manner without understanding
the essence the struggle of the artist
at the existential cognitive and
political economic levels art as a form
of creative expression needs to survive
depending on one indispensable resource
recognition recognition of some other
human beings
starting from another clothes individual
to a great very great social collective
this is a necessary precondition of this
entire creative labor a precision a
co-lead interpretation
internalization patronization and
institutionalization all these factors
only come later I told you earlier that
women are actually now coming to the
fore of taking the role of the master
artist here she’s engaged in a pious
task of giving eye sight to the deity
chakuda giving the eyes the third eye to
the date the Altamira painters were a
collective without any expressed mission
the spirit was to declare their
existence and feelings for the posterior
the capes cultures across the world were
often motivated by fairytale religious
city and silent resistance in the last
2,000 years of human history culture or
art history is increasingly observed by
three factors of power militarism
urbanization and market penetration a
few of the artists and often the base in
the craft were patronized by the local
and regional ruling class however
protection given in that form was often
unstable and peaceful in nature art as a
form of occupation and labor has
remained and is still remaining a source
of life long struggle against odds of
living how market is cohabiting with
artistry this picture shows that this is
urban almost militant and definitely
marketing however the over
commercialization of the festivity like
every sphere of social living today has
woman homogenized the skill and art to
reproduce identical replicas in more
number in QuickTime the meter starts a
profound attachment in the artistic
creation has given way to an attitude of
branding merchandise self-styled
prize-winning artist most of whom enjoy
corporate media patronage are
increasingly eating into the small pie
of the regular Idol makers training the
troll is the call of the day the
struggle of the circumstances is forcing
but if you to leave the traditional
the celebration is also the celebration
of the childhood the feel the back heard
of the artist studios the mud which is a
sense of the creations of the idol is
been made with the footwork of the
workers roughen and yet to second and
this is my Durga who’s always working in
the field in the studio and with a smile
labor demands this kind of patronage of
spirit she’s the spirit of the artisans
of commercially this is the list of
reference but I particularly would like
to mention Rohit Ashok chakra booty he
made this case in his group is the IT
student of mine thank you very much [Applause]